Get a UTR

If you know you need to file an income tax return by January 31st 2020, and you have done nothing yet, then the priority is to get a Unique Taxpayer Reference. This is a 10-digit number in a format like 12345 67890 and it is needed to file a tax return. See an accountant at once!

We have lots of new technology and can prepare a set of accounts very quickly if we need to, but no UTR means no tax return can be filed, which means a hundred pound fine for you if you miss the January 31st deadline. Get that UTR!

If you miss the deadline, then you still need to file a tax return at some point, so you will be a hundred pounds poorer for no good reason. We can do it all rapidly, but there is one weak link in the chain concerning a UTR. Get that UTR!

We can scan your bank statements using optical character recognition backed up by our computer-assisted blink comparator, and after that accounts preparation is all-electronic for speed. We will happily throw down the gauntlet to any other accountant who wants to do some speed trials, no matter how big you are. The Achilles’ heel is the UTR, which it is up to you to act on. GET THAT UTR!

You will need to file an income tax return if during the tax year ended April 5th 2019, you had any income or capital gains that the Revenue don’t know about, or you were self-employed, or a tax return has been sent to you by the Revenue. If you think that you shouldn’t have had a tax return, you need to file it anyway. We can write to the Revenue to ask them to stop sending you tax returns if they are no longer necessary, and we will make sure that they do stop. Sometimes you need an accountant to switch things off!

As soon as we know your UTR, we will check that it looks correct by entering it into a dummy client in our tax return software. The first digit of the UTR is a check-digit which enables us to detect any errors, the commonest error being a transposition error where 12345 is misread as 12435 for example. We will also apply online at once to be your tax agent, and this provides a further check on the correctness of the UTR. We can then file tax returns even while we are still waiting for a response from the Revenue. Everything hinges around getting that UTR.